(Newser)
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Robert Downey Jr.’s father started giving him drugs at the tender age of 8—and the actor once did cocaine with his dad and Jack Nicholson. The Iron Man 2 star recalls his history with drugs in a Rolling Stone interview: “All those years of snorting coke, and then I accidentally get involved in heroin after smoking crack for the first time. It finally tied my shoelaces together,” he says of his downward spiral.

Surprisingly, hitting bottom had a silver lining of sorts: In jail, “when the door clicks shut, then you are safe,” he says. “You are actually in the safest place on Earth. Safe from the intruders.” The actor also remembers how his life turned around—a 2003 intervention, rehab, and “the best shrink in America,” the New York Daily News reports.